


On the Run

by GarishGarchomp



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon | Pokemon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon Versions
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cyberpunk, Gen, Nuzlocke Challenge, POV Animal, Solarpunk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2020-10-28 07:00:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20774441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GarishGarchomp/pseuds/GarishGarchomp
Summary: Alola is in flux. Pokemon are integrating into society, tech is booming, civilization is sprawling… and for many inhabitants, tensions are mounting. In the midst of this sea change, one Alolachu sets out to solve one mystery, and ends up dealing with several of them.





	1. I'm Wired

Of all the places for an investigation to start, the back of a dingy club is definitely not what I woulda predicted. My nose recoils at the stench of the tiny bathroom next door, while my ears twitch like crazy at the guitars wailing on stage. It’s weird—their melodies are simple and discordant, but the way they drive everything forward is almost… catchy?  
  
The guys who were in this room a minute ago called it “punk.” When I’m outta here, I might have to look it up. The pure speed alone is enough to get me tapping my foot on my tail, at least until it grinds to a halt to a smattering of cheers and then silence.  
  
For now, though, I give one last look around the _Arlo's_ "green room" before I move on. A torn-up sofa with permanent butt imprints, graffiti and writing covering every inch of every wall, and a paralyzed crew member lying flat on the wooden floor. Nothing weird about this!  
  
I peek outside, making sure the krokorok manning the back door isn’t around. The coast has to be clear when those guys are on payroll, or else I’m in some choppy waters. Luckily he’s elsewhere, so I shut the door to the “green room” behind me and surf down the hall to the twin offices I saw on the way in.  
  
One of them? Definitely illegal stuff in there. But it’s just being used as a storage space, and I’m a runner, not a trainee at Machamp Movers. The other office has what’s more my speed: a computer. An old, fat, tan desktop from a few decades ago. One with tons of wires—wires!—for I don’t even know what. But it’s still a computer.  
  
I psychically ready a paperclip as I approach the door, but it turns out it’s been left unlocked. Yes! It slides open with a bit of a wail, so I take one last peek around before slipping inside. It’s hard for me not to make noise too with all the dust smothering the shelves and tubs lining the walls.  
  
The door creaks shut behind me as I hover over to the quietly humming computer. Normally that would have me on edge, but nobody’s going to hear that now since the band that got me in here is now prepping for their own noise onslaught. They looked all aloof and tough, but they couldn’t resist letting a curious little raichu tag along with them inside!  
  
Static from the monitor makes some of my fur stand up. My ISLAND flickers to life at the sight of the computer, all sorts of data and options popping up in my vision thanks to the little black device clipped to my ear. I give the door a quick glance as the desktop groggily wakes up. Ever since a little incident a few blocks down, I’ve had one eye on the door every time I have to infiltrate some little office like this. With the coast clear and chords blaring more and more often, though, I jack in.  
  
The room drowns in black, leaving me waiting in the void as cyberspace loads. It’s only seconds before neon towers rise from the abyss, light blue cutting through the darkness like bruxish fangs through malasadas. Pretty soon I’m looking down a whole corridor of them, all streaming with data. Some are plastered with code and zeroes and ones, while others scroll through legal stuff I won’t even try to comprehend. They glow atop a circuit board floor, illuminating my path forward and the hundreds of aisles on either side as it stretches beyond my field of vision like someone copied and pasted this for a day straight. And I can’t help but grin. Most of these cyberspaces look like real life, if you ran it through all sorts of processing and compression again and again and again until it’s all pixelated and distorted. I’ve been through cyber-parks, cyber-malls, and cyber-beaches. The cyber-beaches, obviously, are the best!  
  
This? This is just… cyber.  
  
And from my experience, that means it’s going to be too easy.  
  
Maybe Diego just got caught, that’s all. Krokoroks and krookodiles are, what’d he call ‘em, our “mortal enemies?” He coulda gotten beaten up by one of them, something I bet will never happen again. He coulda forgotten to check the door like I did. There’s a whole lot of things that coulda happened. I just dunno how it could happen in the most basic cyberspace I’ve ever seen.  
  
I start off cautious, hovering forward slowly just to make sure there’s no hidden firewalls at the start. Gotten burned by that before too! But neither me nor my trusty, always diligent ISLAND sees anything, and who knows when guards might make their rounds in the real world. So I take off down the hall and turn these sky blue monoliths into blurs and glorified lights. I make sure to weave around though, cutting into narrower alleys here and there and proceeding forward through them. You never know if you’ll hit a speed trap. Those things are nasty, let me tell ya.  
  
By the time I sense I’m close to their files, though, I haven’t had any hints of danger. Just a pleasant little surf through a pleasant little retro cyber-city.  
  
And then I feel it.  
  
It’s like the wind changing directions. The towers glow hotter, the corridors get narrower. Lights run from the circuitry below to… whatever’s ahead.  
  
And something’s pulling me closer. Whether it’s closer to the files or closer to a firewall, I can’t tell.  
  
But there’s only one way to find out!  
  
I take it slow now, even pulling a few stray trinkets of data into my cloud, but I still feel like I’m getting caught in a riptide as I surf closer to where most of the files might be. When I turn around, it still tries to latch onto me, tugging me back before I break free long enough to retreat.  
  
It doesn’t like that.  
  
It’s only getting stronger, too. Whether it was hovering closer that did it or if I triggered it before then, I poked a lycanroc sleeping under a full moon, and it’s wide awake and red-eyed now.  
  
My cheeks fizzle with extra static, and my surfboard of a tail is struggling to stay straight in the current. I’m heading straight back towards the exit now, but the danger’s only getting steeper and steeper. The boring blue towers around me pulse, like they’re cheering on the firewall that’s gaining on me. The stronger its pull becomes, the brighter everything gets. Not just these monoliths, either. The black sky is lighting up. Neon blue holds up hot pink now.  
  
I bat at my ISLAND with a paw, hoping to jack out right here. I get a red exclamation mark in my face. ERROR! CANNOT EXIT!  
  
This is what Diego got himself into.  
  
I pick up speed. I swerve all over the path in front of me because I couldn’t go in a straight line if I wanted to, but it doesn’t matter as long as I get away from this thing. As long as I go as fast as I can, I’ll be okay. And if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s that.  
  
Quavering white tendrils flank either side of me. A quick glance behind shows nothing but white, nothing but the gaping, famished maw of a security system that’s gotta be illegal. It’s swallowing the towers, swallowing the route I took to awaken it, and I’m next on the menu.  
  
The pink is being replaced by black again at the far end of my vision. That’s the goal. That’s the jack-out point. It’s coming on quicker than the firewall, but filaments from this yawning white snatch at my tail, lap at my sides, making sure I know I made a mistake coming here today. It’s trying to make sure I get a hospital bed right next to my friend.  
  
The darkness hits me head-on. I feel myself drifting in limbo as my vision crashes. Blue, pink, white, all of them fall to the black. My heart pounds, and my head throbs, and my ears twitch uncontrollably.  
  
And when my senses return, I’m back in the dusty old office at _Arlo’s_.  
  
Not today, firewall. Not today.  
  
The computer screen flickers, the only show of my eventful visit inside. I didn’t even touch what it’s storing, but I can’t complain about that. All the data I needed to get, I experienced. I felt it.  
  
Whatever that firewall was, it’s nothing like what I’ve seen in the half-year I’ve been on this job. All I know is that I managed to escape it, and my friend didn’t.  
  
And if I don’t hit a Focus Blast right now, I won’t be escaping the krokorok at the door.


	2. Gotta Get Out

Nikau just kinda stares at me once I finish filling him in the next morning. I can’t read his stern blue eyes. Never really can. If there’s anyone in the world I would expect that with, though, a super stoic zoroark would make a lot of sense!  
  
Not that he’s mean. He calls himself a hardass, which he does his best to live up to, and he’s nowhere near as impish and outgoing as his sister, that’s for sure. The first day we met, he told me not to expect much, because “Kauri is actually nice. I’m aloof at best.”  
  
But I dunno, I think Nikau is plenty nice. I mean, he lets me live with him in his cramped little back-alley flat, just for a little money out of each job I do. And he’s never really been mean to me, besides once early on… He’s just mean to most of his runners. And pretty much all non-runners. If you’re not with Nikau, you’re probably against him. He’s that kind of guy.  
  
Those big blue eyes disappear behind a paw as he shakes his head. “Just about any other runner I know would have gotten the hell out. Best case, they’d have tried to push it to the backburner, but gotten way too cautious on their next few missions and hardly get anything done. And here you are, diving headfirst into a damn minefield without a second thought…” He says it as an implication, but I see a hint of a smile.  
  
“It wasn’t that bad! I got out of cyberspace all safe, and that krokorok had hardly hit the floor before I was out the door!”  
  
Nikau crosses his arms. “That’s all very nice, but you had no idea what to expect and you still just… went for it like there was no danger involved.”  
  
“I had to figure out what happened to him!” I tell him. Nikau just _looks_ like he disagrees. A lot. Tapping his foot, running a paw through his mane, all that.  
  
“Did you really? You had no idea what was going on, just that your friend almost got killed. And that made you think you should do the exact same thing he did,” he says. Maybe he wasn’t smiling after all.  
  
“The way you told me about Diego was like… what happened wasn’t normal. I’ve heard you talking about others getting into trouble, or even getting their ISLANDs fried. But this felt different. I figured I could get out if trouble hit, but I had to find out _something_.”  
  
He shakes his head some more, the tip of his mane struggling to keep up. Keeping all that fur clean has gotta be a pain in the butt. It looks super cool, but I dunno if it’s worth the maintenance.  
  
“I know you’re psychic, but I still hate your intuition sometimes.” He scoffs, but then pauses, like he’s choosing his words carefully. More carefully than usual, I mean. “His incident definitely felt different, you’re right about that. I did some research of my own while you were out, too, in a _much safer_ way. Making calls and such. You’d find out quick enough anyways, knowing you, so I’ll give it to you straight: Diego isn’t the only one.”  
  
Nikau must see my face fall, because he’s quick to follow up. “It’s not a hell of a lot of others, don’t worry about that. I heard one’s already made a near-full recovery, too, so Diego should be able to recuperate. But it’s not an isolated incident. Not everyone has come out as clean as that other guy, and it’s far broader than just Arlo’s.”  
  
He grabs a folder off his rickety desk and carelessly frisbees it over to me. It smacks my face before I levitate it in front of me, peering at a couple pages inside.  
  
“Arlo’s is one place where a couple runners have gotten severely jolted, but there’s a few others around Alola with similar activity. And I mean around Alola, because there’s not much to look into on this island. I can look into it further, if you’d like... Would let you borrow my computer if I wasn’t downright shackled to it this week.” He rolls his neck towards the desktop like it has him on a leash.  
  
It’s kinda sad how much he’s on there. I mean, he’s a zoroark! He could do whatever he wanted around town with his super cool illusion powers, and instead he’s always online, monitoring runners and coordinating missions and trying to make sure we have enough jobs to get by. Every so often he’ll go out for a job of his own, though, or even just a jog around the city. Maybe that’s enough for him… I can’t exactly imagine him going and playing pick-up soccer or something!  
  
“That would be real nice of you, Nikau. Really! And I’d really like you to do that for me… really.”  
  
He rolls his eyes way back into his head. Guess he’s heard me pull this turnaround before. “But?”  
  
“Buuuuuut I think the best way for me to get details is to go investigate. I managed to duck this firewall at Arlo’s on my first try, even as gnarly as it was, so I’ll dodge it easily now that I know it’s there. Look, if this is something all runners gotta watch out for, it’s something that needs to be taken care of, right?”  
  
My boss sighs. “Had a feeling. Look, I’ll be honest: I’d much rather you stay here. You do me damn good business, and that’s before the rent money. Even if it’s just for a month or two, that’s a lot of time without one of my best guys… not to mention without someone who can apparently easily avoid this danger.”  
  
Up ‘til now, he was his normal stony self besides that one slip of a smile. Now, his tone turns grim. As if on cue, the fluorescent light overhead flickers too. This isn’t exactly the nicest apartment on the block, but I didn’t need that to accentuate the mood change. “And that’s if you come back.”  
  
My little heart skips a beat. I try not to let it show, just plant my feet firm on my tail and keep looking at Nikau. He stares me down too, but it’s less with austerity and more with… concern, almost. It’s veiled concern, because everything of his is veiled, but even though he’s a dark-type I can pick up on just enough of that vibe.  
  
“You think you’ve got a handle on it, but what if you don’t? What if it’s adaptive and picks up on your tendencies? What if you only stumbled on a beta or even an alpha, and the next time you hit a finished product? What if you drift just an inch too close, even through no fault of your own, and you wake up next year with a hole where your ISLAND used to be?”  
  
“Like the one my friend might have?”  
  
Nikau doesn’t answer that.  
  
“I’m doing this for him. I’m doing it for every runner out there, and I’m doing it for you and me and our peace of mind, but I’m doing it for Diego first off. I gotta know what happened to him, and I gotta make sure he’ll be okay.” I try not to think about what he might look like in the wake of this accident, or what this firewall could be when it’s really kicked into gear, or what you could see right before it eats you alive…  
  
“…I just, I don’t want it to happen to anyone else,” I continue after a beat to bring myself back to earth. “If it was Kauri, you’d be taking a thousand illusions across Alola to hunt down whoever’s doing this, right? I can’t do that, but I can surf like hell, run like hell, and figure stuff out on my own pretty well.”  
  
The Kauri thing hit him. I think it hit him too hard. Shoot, it hit me just imagining her jolted up real bad. After all she did for me, helping me to the point where I’m working with Nikau now…  
  
“Look, when I get back, I’ll do whatever I can to pay you back, okay? And I will come back. No way I’m gonna wipe out. Guaranteed. I just gotta do this, Nikau.”  
  
I stare at him, give him the biggest and brightest eyes I can muster. I know why he doesn’t want me to go. Not just that he wants me to keep working for him, but because he doesn’t want me hurt too. But I can make it safer for everyone! I can’t not do it when that’s on the table, you know?  
  
Nikau closes his eyes and buries them under both paws. His thinking super hard pose. I see it twice a day, minimum, but usually slumped over his computer. The fact that he’s at least thinking about it has gotta be good, right? No, it’s definitely good. Usually when he says no, it’s lightning quick.  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“Really?” I probably sound like a little kid who was told to pick out any one toy from the store.  
  
He drags his paws down his muzzle, waiting a moment before opening his eyes again. When he does, though, they flicker, gazing into space rather than at me. He swipes at the air a couple times, scrolling through whatever list he’s brought up on his ISLAND.  
  
“Uh… what are you doing?”  
  
“Well I’m not just letting you dart out right now all on your lonesome. If you’re going to be traversing Alola for this whole investigation, then I’m calling in…” He drums his claws on his desk as he ponders something, before jabbing at the air. “Let’s say a bodyguard.”  
  
“A bodyguard? You’re really making someone follow me around all of Alola?” I throw my paws up in disbelief, just to make sure he gets it. “You don’t trust me?”  
  
“Exactly the opposite. Alola’s a dangerous place even these days, and I’d rather you not be troubled getting from run to run. Besides, these guys owe me a favor… or six,” he grumbles.  
  
“And all they’ll be doing is following me around,” I say. Sounds boring.  
  
Nikau finishes whatever message he’s sending and glares at me. “Yes, unless you get into some kind of trouble. So, probably not.”  
  
So yes, but… wait.  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I exclaim, thumping my foot on my tail and bobbing in the air.  
  
He can’t keep that straight face for long, breaking into a smirk containing the brightest fangs on the island. “You’ve got as much a chance at staying out of trouble as I do of becoming a clown. And that’s with the markings. Anyway, he’s probably on his way as we speak, and if he isn’t then I’ve got more than a couple calls to make. For now, let’s try to gather a few targets while I have a minute.”  
  
We hunker down for a good half hour. He digs into the reports he’s heard from around the region, while I pore through the few files I pulled last night before getting into his reports too. The end result is a trio of businesses in Akala to run on, plus whatever comes up along the way. As long as none of them are like the one Nikau vetoed because the firewall looked super potent there…  
  
Just as we finish that up, the bare lightbulb above his monitor illuminates, warming up this metallic little dive of an apartment. Someone’s poking around the front door.  
  
I hate to say it, but I’m kinda eager to see who’s joining me in this adventure. Maybe it’ll be a super cool lucario, or some kind of flyer to take care of ground-types. I’d even take a mandibuzz perched at the door right now, if it means I can worry less about ghosties… and we won’t have to share any food.  
  
Nikau checks his camera feed and remotely unlocks the door, but I’m not quick enough to see who was on screen. All I get as a hint are claws clacking against linoleum before a torracat struts into the living room. Err, the only room, unless you count the alcove where Nikau’s cot is. Somehow the torracat looks just as aloof as my boss. He’s wearing an ISLAND too, meaning he’s not some overzealous fresh-from-the-wild type, but I coulda gone without a cat eating my dust for a few weeks. Thankfully, neither he nor Nikau sees my reaction, so I have time to get a straight face back in order.  
  
“What happened to Ante?” Nikau asks, not looking up from his work.  
  
“Took the week off, starting yesterday,” comes the reply, in a typically scratchy voice. “Probably piss-drunk in the Unovan desert by now.”  
  
“No probably about it. That damn croc drinks like a conkeldurr on a Friday night at the dock.” Nikau spins on a heel and lowers a paw for the feline to awkwardly shake. “Glad you could help out though.”  
  
His information shows up in my field of vision now, not that there’s a whole lot. My ISLAND’s been whirring just to gather whatever intel it can, but it makes sense that someone working in security wouldn’t have a lot out there. I get enough to know his name’s Sione, though, and he’s been with Rengkok Security Solutions for almost a year.  
  
“For sure. I’m gonna guess Speed Racer over here’s on my watch now?”  
  
“You can call me Milo!” I chirp.  
  
Nikau doesn’t even glance at me, and hardly skips a beat. “Yup. Headed right to Akala from here.”  
  
“Hope he doesn’t mind the detour to Royal Ave then, while I’m in the area.”  
  
Sione stretches his claws all lazily, but Nikau isn’t amused. “Hope you don’t mind keeping an eye on him while you’re getting into your little catfights down that way. You’re probably heading to Ula’ula too, by the way. Who knows beyond that, as long as he’s back here by the end of it. You’re probably not going to be able to follow him in when he’s doing his runs, of course, but bail him out if anything goes wrong, and keep him out of trouble in between.”  
  
“You don’t have to treat me like I’m being babysat,” I tell him. “I can handle myself perfectly fine. Just… gonna need a little help in the wild. Maybe.”  
  
He leans in towards the torracat, but speaks just loud enough for me to hear. “He’ll need a lot of help in the wild. Definitely.”  
  
I huff, but my new bodyguard laughs. “No problem. Figure if I can finally evolve this month, nobody fucks with either of us anyway.”  
  
Nikau turns back to his computer, pulling up his run tracker again since a couple others were scheduled for infiltrations later today. “You said that three months ago.”  
  
“And I learned a valuable lesson then! Namely, that I’ll know for sure when my time is coming. And it’s coming,” he replies, the first time he’s had any flicker of fire in his voice.  
  
“Good, then you can tuck him under your arm and keep him safe. Until then, you two’ve got a ferry to catch.”  
  
Huh. I expected more of a goodbye from Nikau, but I guess the sooner I leave, the sooner I can get back here and get back to work.  
  
“Fair enough,” Sione sighs, as if he could sound even more tired. “Aight Milo, boss man wants us out, so we’ve gotta play our cat and mouse games elsewhere.” He grins, giving me a good look at his jagged yellowing chompers. Definitely doesn’t care for them the way Nikau does… but I guess it is harder when you’re quadruped.  
  
I nod and start to surf out, but Nikau sticks an arm in my path, still without even looking up from his screen. He’s _scary_ good at multitasking.  
  
I have to wait a few seconds for him to finish his business, but when he finally turns to me, he rubs my head and grins just a little, which is scary in a different way. And that’s with knowing him!  
  
“Go fuck ‘em up out there. If anyone’s getting to the bottom of this, it’s you.”  
  
I smile and salute. “Roger that!”  
  
I follow Sione out with one last glance back, and Nikau gives a little half-wave before shutting the door.  
  
“Hey, don’t fuck ‘em up too hard though,” Sione says, turning around to give me a smirk. “I can’t have you embroiling me in some shit that’ll hold me back when I move on from this job.”  
  
“I thought that was your job, though…” I say. Not even a minute into this trek, and I almost wish that alcoholic croc was tailing me around instead.


	3. Harbor Rats

Every time I hear people talk about how much the city has changed, someone else replies by saying the Port of Hau’oli has stayed the same for decades. You might see torracats working as bodyguards and mandibuzz package delivery and smeargles opening art studios in sketchy neighborhoods, and that’s all cropped up in just a couple years, but there’ve been all kinds of mons working at the docks since they were built. I bet the first thing humans got pokemon to help them with centuries ago was just lifting heavy stuff!  
  
The port also isn’t the most high-tech place, even while the rest of Hau’oli is rapidly transforming. The same cranes have been in use since way before I was born, and they’re still operated by humans rather than being automated like so much else. Heck, I heard the company who runs the ferry service wants to test out a self-driving boat! But cargo doesn’t load and unload itself, fish don’t usually leap into nets that cast themselves out at sea, and until that day in the near future, ferries don’t shepherd island-hoppers on their own accord.  
  
“…hey.”  
  
We somehow made it all the way down to the seaside without saying anything. Well, other than Sione telling me to slow down a couple times when I surfed too far ahead, but that doesn’t count!  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I’m Sione, by the way. Your own magic little AR vision earclip probably told you that much, but I should introduce myself for real if we’re about to be best friends forever for the next month.”  
  
“Milo. Nice to meet ya!” I greet, swooping in for a paw shake. Again, he manages to do so with a grace that’s kinda lacking.  
  
“I swear, I don’t need to evolve to wrestle so much as just to fucking shake a hand,” he growls, but with a grin. He might have some of the same mannerisms and bite as Nikau, but it seems like he’s not really uptight at all. He just has that devil-may-care thing going. “Anyways, you’re a hotshot lil runner, yeah? How long you been doing it?”  
  
“Few months. Long enough to get settled and get into a groove with it,” I reply, looking around to find the ferry terminal. The port’s been around so long, I guess it wasn’t designed by professionals. We almost wandered into a construction zone a few minutes ago, and now just finding the right pier is a task.  
  
“Not bad. Still a big jump though, going from the wild to the city to now the whole region, yeah?” His tail flickers, like it’s as curious as the rest of him.  
  
“Didn’t even think about that! I’m kinda excited to get out there, though. All I’ve really seen of the world is half of Melemele max, so it’ll be cool to see what else Alola has to offer… while I’m cracking this case wide open, of course!”  
  
Sione swerves in front of me, leading us closer to the sea. Should definitely let him lead, since I have no clue where I’m going, and he’d probably kill me if I zipped all around trying to find my way.  
  
“Good attitude to have. I’ve only been over to Akala once myself, and uhhh, that didn’t end too well. Not worth the trouble of being out at sea… twice. So we’ll both be in for a fun- oh, over here. Knew I recognized where we were. C’mon.” He doesn’t wait for me to get my bearings before taking off. With how quick I am, he doesn’t have to.  
  
We don’t slow down until we’re at the ticket office, waiting in line behind a huge pack of tourists. Besides us, there’s only a couple birds hanging around in here and some old guy with headphones connected by a wire to some small white brick-looking thing.  
  
Sione makes a big show of yawning before he turns to me again. “So clearly you’re not just heading out for some small-time gig. Not if I’m your travel buddy for this. You at liberty to discuss what all we’re trekking for, or is that top-secret stuff that Nikau’d have your head for letting slip?”  
  
I shrug, and look around to make sure nobody’s eavesdropping. He couldn’t have asked before we got here? I don’t think the tourists speak Alolan, though, but we turn the translators in our ISLANDs off to keep things on the down-low regardless.  
  
“No, it’s fine! You gotta know what’s up. Basically, there’s a huge- ah!”  
  
A hawlucha lands right next to us, eyeing us both with a fierce gaze.  
  
“You two are going to Akala, yes?” she says, less asking and more demanding information.  
  
Sione has his hackles raised, but I just say “…uh, yeah, why?” Nothing crops up in my view besides the fact that she’s a hawlucha and she’s pretty strong. No name, no whereabouts other than a map showing the species’ concentration up the mountain, nothing.  
  
In other words, she’s wild. But I knew that by just how direct she is.  
  
“How long? Not just a there-and-back, right?” She cricks her neck like she’s not totally intruding on us right now, like she doesn’t notice the fact that Sione is motioning for me to get behind him so he can do the talking. Like he’s my lawyer or something.  
  
“…why?” I repeat. “I asked first.”  
  
The hawlucha sighs, scratching the feathers crowning her head. “I need to get to Akala to look for trainers. If you two are going to be there a while, I’d like to travel with you instead of risking getting caught by some… lucky scrub.”  
  
“Don’t I know that one. The number of times I’ve heard ‘free starter!’ makes me want to punt a popplio.” Sione says, rolling his eyes. “I bet Mr. Ex-Pikachu here’s dealt with it plenty too.”  
  
He cocks his head towards me and rolls his eyes my way to boot. Not his best memories, I guess.  
  
“A couple times. Was too fast for them even then, though,” I say, puffing out my chest.  
  
“Adorable,” the hawlucha scoffs. “Look, I won’t intrude on whatever plans you’ve got going. Clearly you’ve got a magical buddy cop adventure ahead of you, and I’d love nothing more than to not ruin it. But I’ve been itching to get off this island for a couple weeks now, and somehow you’re the first ones that could actually be that ticket.”  
  
Sione and I exchange wary glances. “The first ones?” I ask.  
  
“In weeks,” Sione tacks on.  
  
“I haven’t been loitering here all day every day, mind you. I’ve got training to do myself, so I’ve just been swooping in at peak hours. But there still aren’t many pokemon island-hopping this route even these days, and I’m pretty sure most of them are just doing it to party on the Heahea beaches for a weekend. Hedonistic bastards.”  
  
“Nothin’ wrong with a little day drinking~” Sione purrs. “For real though, you’re just looking for a trainer?”  
  
“For a strong one, yes.” She eyes us both, up and down, still with the same unreadable expression. Birds are freaky… “Though by the looks of it, you two could use someone to bail you out once you get into deep shit by the volcano or some such.”  
  
“Hey!” I exclaim, while Sione expresses the same contempt in a far more vulgar way. “We’re plenty strong by ourselves! I wouldn’t be making this trip if I wasn’t.” If I could cross my arms like Nikau does, I would.  
  
“Oh, so you’re protecting the kitty then? That makes a lot more sense.” The hawlucha finally starts smirking, betraying just how much she seems to like taking jabs at us.  
  
“Fuck. Off,” Sione spits again, along with a couple embers that land harmlessly at the avian’s feet. “I was just thinking you could hitch a ride with us, but if you’re going to spend the whole time jabbing at us then we’ll let you camp out here the rest of the month. C’mon Milo, these tourists are just about done. Actually, that lady’s waving us over right now~”  
  
He strolls right on over, leaving me to watch the hawlucha’s expression glitch and falter. The face of someone who just realized the hole they dug themselves.  
  
“Shit, okay, I’m sorry. Really. Let’s just start over and go from there. Preferably on this next ferry.”  
  
While she peeks worriedly at the clock, Sione ushers me over to go to the lady at the counter first. Kinda weird that they still have people manually working tickets, but I guess it makes sense since they have to monitor humans and pokemon boarding now. You can always lie to a computer and say you’re a Cutiefly instead of a Kommo-o, but you can’t do that to a 50-year-old woman!  
  
“You’re really sorry? Or you’re just saving face sorry?” Sione prods as I ask the lady for a pokemon ticket. Bit more expensive than I’d hoped, but I have savings from my last couple runs. “I’m not spending a whole ferry ride with you just following me around and glaring daggers either, not to mention however long we’ll be on Akala together.”  
  
I turn to see the hawlucha preening her feathers, buying a little time before answering. “I am really sorry. We can talk on the boat, promise. Though I’ve already said just about everything there is to know about me.”  
  
As my ISLAND transfers a few poké away from my account, Sione furrows his brow at me. “You good with her playing third wheel?” he asks, still trying to form an opinion himself.  
  
I shrug. “We could always be a tricycle.”  
  
Sione snorts as he approaches the lady now, with a click from his ear as he engages his translator. “Let’s not get carried away there, mighty mouse.”  
  
He completes his own transaction even quicker than I did, and strolls right on past both of us with his paper ticket impaled by a claw. “Alright birdy, get your shit and let’s go.”  
  
“Hold on,” she says, throwing a hand up. The young man next in line sighs loud enough for the whole building to hear.  
  
“What?” I ask on behalf of Sione and his visibly worn patience.  
  
She backpedals towards the counter a couple steps. “I need one of you to buy me a ticket.”  
  
Sione turns his translator off again, now that he’s got his ride. “Bloody hell. Milo, you’re rich off your naughty deeds, I’ll let you dabble in pokemon trafficking now. I’ll find us some spots on this cursed watercraft.”  
  
“Outside, please!” the hawlucha calls after him, to no reply. She turns to me. “Hate being cooped up indoors.”  
  
“Tell me about it,” I reply, surfing back over to the counter. If the woman has any reservations about what all just transpired, even though she couldn’t understand any of it, she doesn’t show it. Instead she just hands the bird her ticket off Melemele and calls the next in line up.  
  
“Milo, right?” she asks as we exit the terminal. Sione’s already heading up the gangway, trying super hard not to look at the waters beneath. “Thank you. If I find a trainer out there, it’s because of you.”  
  
I smile. “Don’t mention it! It’s good to meet you…”  
  
“Iva. Just Iva.”  
  
“Iva. Cool name!” I say, dropping my levitating ticket into the guy’s hand before Iva deliberately hands hers over.  
  
“Would like to think so. Come on, let’s see what shitty seat that cat got us.”  
  
I take one last look at Hau’oli, the only place I’ve known since I integrated, before following her inside.


	4. Interlude 1

Malie City radiates below my thorny morning perch.  
  
My grandmother used to tell me about the days where the sun itself had the job of illuminating Malie. Every morning, the horizon would spit out a full spectrum of color, rousing everyone from their slumbers. Lights inside buildings would flicker groggily, and in time everyone would come out of their shells. It was hypnotizing, she said, the way humans would spill onto the streets, and almost chaotic the way they would disperse all over. Some would go so far as the seas, or up here on Hokulani.  
  
But it was a subdued affair, she said. Like it was merely a divine ritual, and once the sun finally escaped the horizon’s talons, all its humans would be summoned from their homes.  
  
Nowadays, the city never powers off.  
  
The sun needs no ritual now, even though it still performs the same song and dance every morning. But why would Malie need its light when there’s enough in the city to illuminate the entire region? Half of the homes, even as traditional as they look, glow all through the moon’s reign. All the other buildings, the restaurants and stores, they scald the dark sky with their neon, all night, every night. The daylight palette might be grey and blue from the smog and rivers dissecting the city, but once the sun disappears, it’s all fluorescent save for the copious red from brake lights lining the streets.  
  
It’s all so unnatural, my flock squawks. Their wings get all jittery just thinking about venturing down the mountain, while the one who has made the trip just laments not seeing the stars at night. Truly, that most undesirable of fates for a pokemon, being blind to the sparkling dust overhead. Much more than being attacked by a power-hungry salazzle and feeling toxins you were born to immunize, or getting your feathers ensnared by a horrendous trainer and risking your life every time you’re let back out into the open.  
  
Personally, I’d kind of like to sidle on into Malie City. As much sidling as a giant steel bird can do, anyways. Just because we’re avian doesn’t mean we’re graceful.  
  
The issue isn’t the sidling, though. I could swoop down there right now and probably toddle through the streets just fine. They’ve seen some of us overhead, and they’ve seen plenty of other creatures wandering the stone streets. I wouldn’t be worth much eye-batting.  
  
Staying there would be difficult. Of course there are jobs for me. I’m a skarmory, some local business at the very least would kill to have me doing delivery routes. I could provide transport, for those who want the scenic view up the mountain. Hell, I’m sure the local police force wouldn’t mind me keeping watch on the west side of town. But that all feels… peculiar.  
  
Say what you will about life in the wild, but at least you know your place here. At least you’re amongst your own kind, at least you’re able to revel in your instincts and make your ancestors proud and get into scraps whenever you need to sharpen your talons or put a dent in your wings. Or, better yet, when you need to put a dent in someone else’s.  
  
Living down there, in Malie? It’s a glamorous identity crisis, that’s what it is. You can walk and squawk like a human all you want. At the end of the day, you’re still a giant metal bird… but a giant metal bird with a roof over your head when it rains, and money to buy all the fish you could want.  
  
Whatever that’s truly worth.


	5. Let There Be Light

I didn’t expect us to actually get to talking, but an hour and a half is a long time to sit in silence with two people you’re about to spend a loooot more time with. Iva finally busts it open when she asks about us, which means I get to try and explain my whole mission without anyone else catching wind. Can’t take any chances when my line of work is not the most, um… legal. If anyone ever asks about me, I usually just tell them I’m an electrician. Nobody questions that!

After introducing ourselves more properly, we turn the conversation back to her. It turns out Iva’s actually got more motivation than just getting a trainer and knocking heads together. Her older sister was caught a couple months ago, so she wants more than anything else to find her, wherever she is in this vast archipelago… 

“As much as she was a mentor for me, she was a bully even more often,” she said. “I’m sure she’s on her way to the League right now, too. I’ve gotta track her down.”

And then beat her up. Classic wild. Classic hawlucha.

It’s enough conversation to fill half the ride. As things start to tail off, all of us one by one peer over the edge of the craft and get real sinking feelings in our guts. I weave around a bit on my board, trying to get rid of some excess energy. Iva cranes her neck towards the sky, while Sione just looks anywhere but overboard. 

“Boys, I think we have our first point of agreement,” Iva says, as a wave nearly sends Sione splayed into her. 

“Yeah? What’s that?” I ask.

“Boats are the fucking worst,” Sione cuts in. He definitely looks like he’d rather be anywhere else than this deck. 

Iva points at him with a talon. “That. A bird, a cat, and a surfing mouse should not be on a boat. In fact, we are the three types of pokemon that shouldn’t be on a boat.”

“…fish?” I say.

Iva shakes her head. “They don’t count. They’re food.”

“Damn good food though,” Sione purrs as he straggles to his feet.

The hawlucha opens her beak to speak, but another pitch of the ferry sees her shake a feather loose as she tries to keep her balance. “Us?” she starts, once she recovers. “It’s like we are staring Arceus in the face and daring them to pass judgment.”

I look back out at sea. It takes a pretty skilled surfer to go from island to island, especially since mantine surfing is apparently declining from what I’ve heard, but it still feels… inert, almost, to be floating here on a boat. I’ve never ridden in a car or anything, so I’m not used to, you know, moving without moving. 

“It’s weird, yeah. Maybe you’ll get a trainer soon and you won’t have to do any more of these, though!” I tell her, as encouraging as possible.

“If only we all could be so lucky…” Sione groans, pawing at the deck like he wants to have a lie down on his own accord now. He definitely can’t catnap when he’s surrounded by water like this, though. 

He just tries to chill down there until Iva spots the hills backing Heahea’s most famous beach. It was just as he was starting to drift off, which he complains about until they’re throwing the anchors down. I do my best to tune him out as I take in the cityscape.

Heahea City looks way bigger than I thought it was, but it’s not like Hau’oli at all. Almost anywhere you go in my hometown, it’s busy. There’s always something going on, always people about, always new crevices to discover or shops opening up. There’s some kind of festival somewhere in the city every other week too it seems, which is really nice in my downtime from running. 

Here, once you get away from the beachfront, it seems a lot quieter. It’s older, with an archaic and winding layout. Lots of modest plazas and twisting alleys unfurling from each other and spidering out from the sands. Looks fun to navigate, whipping around curves and winding through crowds, but my destination for my next run is on the other side of town. With this haphazard layout, I feel like I’ll never reach Heahea Solar.

I gotta say, though, just from disembarking and meandering into town: Heahea  _ smells _ amazing. Every block there’s a restaurant with some unique smell, with a different kind of seafood or “locally sourced” veggies on either side of me. When I was looking up Heahea on my ISLAND during the ride, I saw that it’s the food capital of Alola, and I sure don’t doubt that now! I might not be hitting up the beaches (unfortunately), but I might get myself something to eat real soon…

That can come after the run, though. For now, I’ve got a big red arrow pointing out every turn I need to make, and a tiny map in the corner of my eye to tell me where it’s taking me. 

It’s almost a whole hour before I make it, even at my pace. Although I kinda can’t go full-out to get there. Iva keeps pace easily, being an especially swift bird, but Sione… he’s kind of a slowpoke. Once I arrive, though, I look around just to make sure I’m at the right place. I figured a big shiny energy company would have a big shiny building to match, but it’s pretty nondescript. Five stories tall, since it’s their headquarters, but it’s just your average-looking office with a mostly glass facade for all that natural light.

In other words, it’s probably not a place that a raichu can just saunter into. Maybe an arcanine if they’re wearing some tech, but not a raichu. I’d be more welcome at a surf shop down the street than here at Heahea Solar.

It’s lunch break, judging by the activity out front. People exiting in a few groups at a time, chatting with one hand and clutching their bags in the other or slinging them over their back. If nothing else, it means I can slip in a bit easier with all this traffic.

I bring up their website, swiping through until I reach the directory. Definitely not looking for the CEO, not any of the executives… ah, there we go! Some names I can use as reference… just in case, of course. Then I shove that aside and bring up the good stuff: the layout. Nikau scouted this one out a while ago, right after they opened actually. One of the few times he’s been off Melemele Island, and boy does it help me out today!

There’s computers all over, of course, but a couple floors have full-on cubicle farms, meaning I may be able to slide into one and get some privacy… 

“So what’s the plan for us all?” Sione asks, pawing at my tail. I swerve out of the way, not wanting those claws digging in even by accident!

“For us?” I ask.

“Yeah. How’re we getting in so you can do your thing?”

I cock my head. “Uhhh… I was gonna do this myself. Like I normally do.”

It’s Sione’s turn to be confused, sitting down right here on the sidewalk. “I mean… that’s nice, and I’m more than fine with leaving  _ her _ behind,” he says, motioning not so subtlely to the hawlucha glaring daggers at him, “But Nikau kinda hired me to keep an eye on you. Keep trouble away. All that.”

“It’s already difficult to sneak into these places, though. And that’s just me. Trying to figure out how to get  _ two _ mons in all stealthlike is trouble,” I tell him, taking another glance at Heahea Solar. He wouldn’t be the most suspicious entrant just by virtue of his typing, but usually his kind are either trained or on their way to doing incineroar things like wrestling or working for moving companies and trying to avoid getting in fights with the machamps.

I think for a second, before a super colorful ad for a nearby malasada shop pops up in my face. I swipe it away, but the answer hits me.

“Wait, duh, I’ll just add you as an emergency contact. So I do that…” I say, scrolling through the list of permissions as fast as my paw will let me, “Turn on GPS for you, uhhh, I guess activity tracking too so you can see when I’m jacked in, vitals and stuff obviously, and done!”

I can tell it works by the way the torracat’s eyes look through me now, processing all the new info in front of him.

“If you see anything wrong, then come save the day. Drag Iva in if you have to, I bet she can knock some heads too.”

“Safe bet,” she says, with a little nod of her head to boot. She also presses her little fists together, like she expects me to get in trouble just to give her some fights. Fat chance!

“Exactly. You’ll know when I’m in and out of their cyberspace, so keep an eye on that. Now gimme a sec, lemme get a plan together here… shoulda done this on the boat.”

I scan this latest group leaving the office, getting their names to pop up right beside their faces. Meanwhile, Sione just mutters “Shit, I gotta learn this stuff…” as he browses the tracker. 

A couple of these employees have their job title on their profiles, which is perfect when I know what floor each department is on. I look at one guy who’s grinning real wide. Tyler Nagano… I think he’s the one whose computer I can use. Hopefully it doesn’t get on his record! I get his friend’s info too as a backup, but I bet I won’t need it.

With all my prep done, I have nothing left to do but wave at Sione and Iva before heading in. It’s just a short surf across the plaza and through the revolving door before the lobby greets me. I’d love as seamless an entry as possible, but with the front desk first thing when you walk in and the elevators off to the side, I’m not sure if I can-

“May I help you?”

Go unnoticed.

“Oh, yeah, hi!” I say, giving the receptionist the happiest look I can while still looking mature. That’s hard for a raichu! “I’m here to see Tyler Nagano? I was going to see him about an installation for my apartment building, just real quick.”

“Okay, just one moment…” she says, tapping away at her computer. If she sees that he’s punched out for lunch, I’ll have to shift to Plan B, but Plan A was super optimistic anyway. 

“Looks like he’s still on the clock,” she says. “You should be able to catch him before his lunch break. If not, come back here and I’ll set up an appointment for another time.”

That explains why he was smiling so wide! Taking a little extra time off today… means I’ll have plenty of time upstairs, though!

“Sounds great! I’m taking my own lunch break for this, so he better be up there!” I crack. “Thank you~”

“No problem, have a great day,” she says. So kind, and so unaware of what I’m here for. Seriously, it would make me feel bad if it wasn’t so much fun to act like a spy, infiltrating businesses and hacking into them! Can’t beat the adrenaline rush of a job like this!

I duck into an elevator and shut the door just before some older man might be getting on. On another day I’d be nicer, but on another day I wouldn’t be doing a run. I sure don’t want him seeing where I’m going, just in case.

When the fourth floor arrives, I look both ways before surfing out. All I hear is a couple people in a conference room, and someone else slaving away at their keyboard. From what I can tell, none of them are near Tyler’s cubicle.

The bigger worry is the security camera posted in the corner of this whole space. Definitely can’t be seen just wandering in here! 

Luckily, I’m a professional. All it takes is a little short-circuiting and a little brute forcing my way into the feed, and I get a pop-up window of the camera’s current view, with me just outside the picture. I take the last 60 seconds of footage, and fast forward through to make sure it’s the near-perfect stillness I want. When that’s confirmed, I just replace the current feed with that footage on loop, and keep the window open in the bottom corner of my vision for when I leave. 

When I hover around the corner and don’t see myself on camera, I grin and make my way to Tyler’s workstation.

His desktop isn’t even in sleep mode yet, since he just left the building not even five minutes ago. How nice of him to do that for me! I feel a little nervous doing this during the day, on a whole new island no less, so any conveniences are welcome. It doesn’t take long for my ISLAND to sync up to his computer, but it’s long enough for me to take another glance to either side of me.

It takes a couple deep breaths to shove all those nerves down before I drop right in. 

My vision goes black save for the familiar text telling me what’s loading. It only takes a couple seconds max before everything rezzes around me, revealing a bright and sunny atmosphere that’s no surprise for a solar power company.

The arcade surrounding me is real nice, with glitched-out shops on either side. The way everything looks like a mosaic in cyberspace is always really cool. It makes you feel like you’re in a different world with all these pixels warping around you, or sharpening up to form a cafe as you pass by.

I surf along at a brisk pace, since I have no time for sightseeing. That can come afterwards, in the real world, in much higher resolution! Fortunately, navigating this space isn’t too difficult. The vivid setting means that I can see where I’m going pretty easily, and once I find a poorly-lit hallway shooting off from the gallery, I know I’m in the right place. Places that look a bit different than the rest of the cyberspace are always where the good stuff is stored. Well, almost always.

My ISLAND chirps into my ear when I come to a distorted office door. It’s pieced together by only a couple hundred pixels, very few of which make up the handle. Just a regular handle, not any kind of trap or electronic lock. Old-school, but not secure!

I open it right up, and bingo! Clarity restored, now that I’m in their “file room.” Basically, it’s the manifestation of all their data. Whenever they save a document or a schematic, it goes into a cyber filing cabinet here. In front of me are allllll of them, lining the walls of the room. Heahea Solar covers the whole island, including two decently-sized cities, so I bet there’s a lot of data here. And a lot of information that would really be bad in the hands of a hacker with nefarious motives. You know, personal information,  _ financial _ information, stuff that can be taken advantage of.

But I’m not one of those guys! I just wanna know what the heck’s up with their firewall! And why a place like this, all shiny and productive, has the same firewall as a dive like Arlo’s. 

The answer probably lies with the computer at the back of the room, staring me dead in the face with a blinking cursor and a charcoal background. I surf right on over to it, and with a simple command and follow-up typed in, everything flickers like there’s a power surge. It’s just initializing though. Within seconds, random folders are being thrown up in my vision to pore through while it all downloads.

The first things I flag are anything that could pertain to their software, anything that could be info about the firewalls themselves. Because look, that’s gotta be the most logical place to start, right? I don’t go into the people they’re all working with, since I bet those are just homeowners or landlords like the one I pretended to be. But the  _ companies _ that’ve come to Heahea Solar, or any that they have files like, you know, business agreements and contracts and all that stuff, I mark those to look at later too. 

As soon as I back away from the computer, my fur stands on end. That creeping feeling is back. The one I felt in the back of my mind at Arlo’s, that I didn’t quite register until it was almost too late. My vision gets staticky around the edges, and it quavers every time I turn to look at something else.

Even before the world gets just a little bit brighter, even before an unfamiliar green light in the bottom right corner of my vision flashes, I know what’s going on.

The firewall is back.

I just bolt. Most of the files have downloaded, so if I weave my way out it should be done by the time I’m out of range.

Except when I get out of their file room, a figure is waiting for me. Between the firewall and the pixelation I can’t make it out perfectly, but it’s not like any pokemon I’ve seen before. It’s stick thin, and it’s pink and blue, and it has some kind of hat on? Whatever it is, it can’t be good news.

“Who’re yo-o-ou?” it asks in a glitchy voice, and it’s hardly even finished that before I fire a point-blank Focus Blast and zip down the hall. A shorter one’s waiting for me, no, he’s charging at me from down the hall! Perfect target for a Grass Knot to trip him up, though, and with a fun little corkscrew I’m over him and out into the arcade.

I look behind me, and— both of them are right on my tail! The first one even looks totally unharmed! By a Focus Blast! 

My ISLAND chimes. Download done. I waste no time batting at my ISLAND to jack out, and unlike at Arlo’s, I’m not blocked from doing so. The sunny gallery drips away, each pixel falling until it all goes black, and then I’m back in the cubicle again. 

The same people in the conference room are talking still, except they’re in some kind of argument now. Another person or two has joined in with the hardcore typing, but I got it all done quick enough that most of the workers haven’t come back from lunch break yet. 

I pull back from the computer with a grin, and look both ways before surfing back to the elevator. I turn off the looping video I put on the security camera, and a quick scroll through the footage shows no sign of rodent activity here! Nobody’s around to see me get in the elevator either, and only the lady from before pays me any attention in the lobby. I give her a nice wave before I get outside and see the real sun, not just a few dazzling pixels in a digital sky. 

When I see Sione and Iva both perched on a nearby bench, I give them a nod before continuing on my way. Once I get a couple blocks down, I have to sit on my tail and wait for a while for them to show up from the opposite direction, but if it means nobody’s on our scent, then it’s worth it! 

“Everything okay?” Iva asks, a bit concerned.

“Yep! Just wanna put some distance between me and this place right after the run. Can’t be too safe!” I reply. Sione nods. He definitely knows how it goes. I think. I guess he’s usually on the opposite side, though.

The three of us only make it a mile up the road before we’re all stopped in our tracks. 

Not by a person, but by a seafood restaurant on the corner that tickles all of our noses. It shouldn’t be hard for a place like this to attract the hunger of a cat and a bird, but something in there even lures me closer.

_ 4.6 stars, 1301 reviews _ pops up on one side of the sign reading Restaraunt Saltxipi. On the other I’m treated to a scroll of photos, everything from the bar inside to elegantly presented dishes to a group of very happy patrons all holding up brightly-colored drinks.

“First day out and about, I’d say that calls for splurging,” Sione says, his tail flicking eagerly.

“I can’t complain if one of you is going to buy me fish,” Iva chips in.

They both turn to me.

“I’m sure they have, like, a salad or something for you,” Sione tells me. “Or… I dunno, berries?”

I give a huff. “I can eat seafood too! I didn’t just stop because you guys stopped, I’m starving.”

“Good, then you’re buying?” Iva prods, even nudging me with a wing.

My current balance helpfully pops up right beside her. Even my ISLAND wants me to spend money today.

“Yeah, yeah, but only because my pay-”

I don’t even get to finish before they’re practically already talking to the host at the front of the restaurant.

Once we’re sat in a pokemon-only booth and have our orders in, I start looking through what I collected, with the ISLAND interface dimming in this place’s ambient lighting. I bring up the files I escaped Arlo’s with too, putting them side-by-side so that I almost can’t see anything else in front of me. But my food isn’t here and Sione and Iva don’t mind, so it’s okay! There’s actually quite a few similar names,  _ especially _ with the tech stuff. I end up making a document to log every match, hoping that the next run I make will really narrow things down. Beyond that, though, it’s a whole lot of nothing. Blueprints, legal documents, negotiations with suppliers, all that stuff I can’t even pretend to know about. 

Just as the waiter arrives with my tacos, something catches my eye. Some of their securities have only been around for a few months. 4 months, to be exact. And that’s when Nikau told me the joltings started.

It’s not much, but it confirms what I already knew: that firewall is what’s doing runners in. And I’m going to have to endure far closer calls to figure out what’s going on.


	6. Wings of Hate

Paniola Town is… an anomaly.

It doesn’t even look like a real town, with a single row of samey buildings on either side of a packed dirt road. Everything is wooden, from the “saloon” that already smells like alcohol at noon to the Pokemon Center at the end of the street to the elementary school that can’t have more than a handful of classrooms. I bet someone could flick a lit cigarette butt onto a porch and send half the town up in blazes. 

Then I pass a rusty golden plaque in front of the “general store,” and it tells me that someone did exactly that about a hundred years ago. Shoulda guessed!

The streets are bustling today, way more than you’d think for a town like this. But it’s the weekend, and it all clicks for me after one look inside “Doc’s General Store.”

“What a fucking tourist trap,” Sione spits, in a far harsher way than I’d put it.

“This looks nothing like the rest of Alola, right?” Iva asks both of us, like we’re not two creatures already having wandered far outside our comfort zones. But I’ve seen Heahea now, and I lived in Hau’oli, and I’ve been up to Iki Town a couple times, so I can at least answer this.

“No, definitely not… and I don’t think the rest of Alola has this many mudbrays,” I say, seeing a few of them strut around and soak up the attention of a couple groups of people who look very happy (and a little off-balance…)

“Usually not this crowded either. This is just because some dude in a cowboy hat decided to buy all this up and turn it into a sideshow for vacationers when they wanna get away from the beaches,” Sione says. Maybe he knows more than I thought he did…

“But… who would come here to see this? There’s nothing to see?” Iva presses. She looks around at everything, just trying to decipher this town’s setup compared to what civilization she’s seen before. I dunno how she takes any of it in, when she’s usually just staring down every trainer we see.

“Humans like cowboys and old stuff, I guess,” I say.

“And booze. They like booze a _lot_,” Sione tacks on. The way his nose twitches and his gaze lingers on a passing bar, it seems like he might be a fan of it too.

None of us really want to stick around, though, so we just saunter right through the center of town. Past another gift shop, past another “saloon,” past a boot shop with so, so much leather… 

Before we reach the Pokemon Center, Iva tenses up. Her gaze locks on dead ahead, on some trainer walking out with her team. She’s had her head on a swivel for trainers since she joined us, but this is the first one she hasn’t scoffed at. Part of it is the team itself: a carbink floats behind, looking especially sparkly in the midday sun, while flanking the trainer are a sableye and pa’u oricorio that look to be in an animated discussion. 

Her trainer’s info comes up in blurbs surrounding her. Name’s Ana, aged 16. Comes from Hau’oli. She started a couple weeks ago on her island challenge, so she’s making decent time. 

“Milo, you see her too?” Iva asks me. “What’re her types?”

With pokemon integrating into society and rare pokemon locations becoming more public knowledge and that kinda stuff, every trainer in Alola now just has three types of ‘mons they can catch. Between that, extra restrictions on the rarer species, and a “first catch” rule that they’re trying to enforce via the trainer ISLANDs everyone gets for their journey, the wilds are pretty well off. More relevant here, it’s hard for Iva to find a trainer who not only looks competent enough for her high standards, but is actually allowed to catch her. 

“Looks like Fairy, Dark, and Flying,” I say, reading off the typings that pop up at her feet.

That’s all the encouragement Iva needs to bolt right towards them.

I give Sione a shrug before surfing after her, watching her literally skid to a halt right in front of their path. She points at the oricorio specifically and starts trash talking in ways I can’t repeat, while her trainer looks absolutely bewildered. Ana turns to me, seeing my ISLAND and hoping I can translate.

“She, uh, wants to battle trainers like you,” I tell her, getting a shaky nod in response. 

“Well, I guess… Sonja, how do you feel about it?” she asks her own bird.

“Sure thing!” comes the chipper reply, with all Iva’s taunts brushed aside with ease.

“Carbink too,” Iva barks. “Just one or the other is too easy.”

Before Ana can ask what she said, the little rock floating behind her perks up. “Excuse me? You better be putting some money where that beak is before I put that beak into the dirt,” she fires back. Way nastier than I thought a carbink could be!

“Shit, this is getting to be a show now,” Sione says, having just arrived on the scene. Both of Iva’s opponents saunter into the middle of the road as the passersby sense what’s happening and grant some space to us all. 

Iva stares both of them down, swiping her claws against each other and digging her talons into the ground in what looks like her pre-battle ritual. “You bet it’s a show,” she tells Sione, giving us a wink as she starts pacing back and forth, still making a big show of her claw-sharpening. I can’t help but lean in a little closer, wanting to see how she approaches this fight. Heck, even Ana’s sableye sidles up to us, putting an arm on my shoulder and keeping it there even after he feels the shiver run through me.

She turns to her foes. “Not going to be a very long show though. I’ll be finished with both of y-”

She charges, catching the oricorio out and eliciting gasps from the growing audience. Sonja dives to her right, but Iva swerves in the same direction and brings her wings down in a whirlwind spin. The oricorio squawks, feathers going flying as she already looks ragged. That’s why I’m happy to be as quick as I am: fighting is _rough_.

Just the way she moves is entirely different from me. Every step, every feint and turn has a distinct purpose. There isn’t a single extraneous action, because no matter what she does, it’s with the sole goal in mind of winning this fight. Of survival, put another way.

I can’t help but wonder, somewhere along my path to this point, when did I lose that sheer intent? It’s not as if the way I do things is wrong. It’s exactly right for my line of work. But as Iva brings down a vicious blow on the carbink, I struggle to think of myself even approximating that. Fighting’s supposed to be in our blood. I’m not sure how much is left in mine.

“Whose beak was going to be in the dirt?” Iva crows, taunting both of them at once. The sableye beside me shakes his head in disappointment, before giving me a sawtooth grin that betrays his bemusement.

The fight really doesn’t last long. Sonja goes back in her Pokeball a moment later, while Iva just chips away at the fiery carbink, chiseling at her luster until she too can’t even find the energy to leer. Iva just looks even angrier, though, like she’s not pleased at all with how this fight is going. And she’s won! Real easily, despite some tattered and dirtied feathers!

Shards of the carbink’s last-ditch boulder fly off in a shotgun spray, just trying to hit the hawlucha at all costs. Iva leaps, glides over a few of them, rolls around another, and lands feet from the fairy untouched. She brings down a wicked chop just as the ragged remains of the floating stone crumble. A few rocks pelt her as she retreats, evidenced by the squawks she lets out and the twitching of her wings. When the dust settles, though, she’s the only one upright.

All the tourists burst into cheers. They must’ve thought this was scripted, the way they all gathered around. Some kinda showdown in the middle of town for their entertainment. Sione rolls his eyes as he pads on over to Iva, and the sableye gives me a shrug and a “Humans…” before skipping over to his trainer. 

Even with society rapidly changing, with people like me and Sione finding our way in proper civilization, I guess nothing really beats a good battle.

Iva looks up at the opposing trainer. Ana’s sweating up a storm even though the temperature is… 62 degrees, my ISLAND informs me. She recalls her carbink with a shaky hand, and her eyes keep darting between the Pokeball and the hawlucha that just decimated two-thirds of her team. 

“Ah… uh, good fight…” she stammers, trying some deep breaths as her sableye leans against her leg. 

“Not really,” Iva spits, turning back to me and Sione. “C’mon, let’s get going.”

“Uh, you sure?” I ask, though I don’t wait up. The sableye waves with that creepy grin though, and I give the tiniest one back. I just don’t understand ghosts…

It’s not ’til we’re nearly out of town that Iva answers me.

“I hope you didn’t think I was just joining up with the first trainer I saw,” she says, still preening her plumage and leaving a trail of feathers in our wake. “I’m not in the business of carrying some scrubs to the next island before my trainer gets us all killed.”

“That sableye was pretty chill at least. Maybe we shoulda gotten him to mutiny and join our little team, huh?” Sione says, nudging me. The thought of him joining up with this motley crew... kinda short-circuits me.

“Well, he’s already dead, so he’s the only one of hers who won’t die,” Iva says. “Most of us aren’t so lucky to choose who we ride with. I’m damn well going to take advantage of my choice.”

“Well, I’m sure once we get to Mount Lanakila an Elite Four member will be more than happy to slot you right in,” Sione says. 

Iva isn’t amused. “There’s no growth in that, but thank you, I’d like to think I am as strong as you say.” She pauses, just to make sure he gets her message. Sione couldn’t care less. “You saw that team makeup though. A carbink, an oricorio, and a sableye? That should be a team that destroys me with a competent trainer at the helm. And if she destroys me, then I can learn from it and grow stronger, and I’ll have a supporting cast that gives me the knowledge that we can reach Lanakila.” 

She turns around, as if we can still see that girl trying to pick up the pieces of that battle. “Instead her team was paper, and she choked.”

I didn’t realize she’d be so selective about this, but I guess it makes sense. I wouldn’t want to be stuck with some kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing either!

Sione rolls his eyes at me before side-eyeing her. “I get the feeling you’ll be sticking with us for quite a while, then.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” comes the reply. “Pardon me for not wanting to die in Brooklet Hill because my trainer can’t live up to her title without hyperventilating.”

I can just tell how thrilled he is that she’s going to be with us indefinitely. “Oh no, I’m sure you would much rather die in Poni Canyon,” he fires back. 

I don’t hear Iva’s response, because a picture of a Zoroark pops up in my vision. It’s accompanied by a pleasant little jingle that I know by heart by now. I surf off to the side before pawing at the air to accept the call.

“Milo, it’s Nikau.” Curt as always.

“Is this Nikau, though?” I ask. “How do I know you’re not a hacker?”

“Because if you hang up on me, I’m cutting your next paycheck in half,” he growls. That’s not a threat I want to put to the test!

“Okay, okay, what’s up?”

“First of all, I was just making sure the first run went all right. I hadn’t heard back from you, so I assumed you hadn’t found anything groundbreaking, but I’ve been surprised before.”

Yeeeeah, there’s been a time or two I’ve kinda forgotten to tell him some important stuff, real early on in my time under him. Learned my lesson quick there!

“Yep, went totally fine! You’re right though, not much to report. I found quite a few companies that overlap with Arlo’s, but I haven’t had a lot of time to look them over when I’m trying to stay on my guard in the wild, y’know?” 

It’s just an audio call, but I feel like I can still see Nikau nodding his head, processing what I told him. “How very responsible of you. Sione hasn’t given up the ghost yet then?”

I look over at him, and he’s still in a very animated conversation with Iva, both of them with their hackles raised. Only Iva looks like she wants it to turn physical though. Sione has his head real low, watching her, more just looking ready to leap out of the way if she takes a swing. 

“Nope, he’s still around! And we, uh, picked up a third too.”

“A third,” Nikau repeats. Suspicion oozes from his tone.

“Just a wild ‘mon, I promise! Doesn’t have an ISLAND or anything. She’s looking for a trainer and wanted to island hop to do so. She’s strooong too! We just got out of Paniola Town and she picked a fight with this one trainer, and beat up her carbink _and_ her oricorio like it was nothing!”

My boss exhales. And inhales just as deep. “Well, okay then. Means you’re staying pretty damn safe, so I can’t complain. Just don’t lose track of the road ahead. I’m sure your two, uh, companions are going to be pulling you left and right.”

“Of course! It’s me, Nikau!” I chirp. Ahead of me, Iva fakes a punch and Sione flinches, then hisses probably loud enough for Nikau to hear.

He scoffs. “Fair enough. Just let me know if anything big comes up, okay?”

“Once I figure out where to run next, I’ll try to send you some details,” I tell him, pulling up a map of Akala. There’s a few options I could try for, but none of them really stand out…

“Well lucky for you, that was the other reason I called. I know after Heahea Solar nothing on Akala was a sure bet, but I think I have the closest thing to it right here.”

“Yeah?” I ask. I open up a sidebar for pins, getting one ready to stick into the map.

“It’s a bit of a trek for you, if you’re near Paniola right now. But in the far north, there’s a small town called Hanawao. See it?”

How did he know I had a map up already? Actually, I shouldn’t question it by now. I think he just knows everything. 

I zoom in on the northern end, and spot a peninsula jutting from the top of the island like a horn. The green of the area below fades up there, likely from development. “Think I see it, yeah. What’s there?”

“It should be a lab, or something along those lines. SynTech Research and Solutions.”

I type that in, and watch the view plummet onto a tiny building, smushed between a cafe and a townhouse on a cramped little side street.

“Found it. This is where I’m running?” I ask him, already plopping a pin down there.

“If you have no better leads, then that’s where I would suggest you go. From the files I’m looking at, and from what little you’ve sent me so far…” He clears his throat nice and loud. Message received! “I think that would be a good step to take. Really rounds out your runs in the early goings too, so any companies that show up in all three can be considered suspect.”

I close the map to see Iva flexing her muscles in front of Sione for some reason. “Sounds like a plan to me! Thanks, Nikau!”

“Of course. Seriously, keep me in the loop this time, okay?” he asks, though it’s really not much of a question the way he says it. Few things are.

“Will do! Talk to you soon!” I say.

“You too, Milo. Take c-” 

As always, he hangs up before finishing his last words. 

I take a second to swipe away my contacts, and… they’re still at each other’s throats.

“…couldn’t beat up a bowl of kibble if it was right at your feet,” I hear Iva spit, just reeeeally egging Sione on for a scrap.

“Guys, guys, come on!” I shout after them, surfing right in the middle of ‘em before they can trade any more barbs. “I take one call and you two want to kill each other?”

“Just maim,” they both say in unison, and immediately look disgusted that they were so in sync.

This is going to be a long, long mission.


	7. Hellhound

The road north of Paniola was a heck of a test for island challengers years ago. There’s too many paths to count, and none of them are very clearly marked. The volcano that looms over Akala Island with its vacant threat stands far to the east, though it can be blocked out by the thick, verdant forests where countless wilds dwell and make a heck of a racket. Everyone might only be one trial in by this point, but the winding trek, the expansive wilderness with no towns close by, and the slew of new mons being added to teams all gives it an air of instability that settles into your nerves and sets them on high alert. We pass trainers fighting, lots of them, and trainers trying in vain to get some rest and one trainer, uhh, peeing on a tree, which I guess counts as resting too?

I dunno if trainers’ ISLANDS have a map feature or not, or maybe it’s disabled in certain sections of the challenge, but at least for us, I can just say which step to take at every fork in the road. Definitely takes the vertigo out of the equation when you know exactly where you’re going!

What is unnerving, though, is the noise. Even as dusk falls— no,  _ especially _ as dusk falls, the woods are restless. Some creatures seek their dinners, while others are just waking and getting ready for a long night ahead. I stick extra close to Sione even as we decide to settle in for the night, especially since he assures me he’ll be awake for a while yet, “you know, like a good bodyguard does.” He even says he’ll pull Iva into a late shift to keep watch. As much as I appreciate it, though, I tell them to wake me up halfway through the night. Not because I could totally handle myself in a knock-down drag-out fight, but because I’m not gonna get babied through this whole mission. 

The night sees no real fuss, but it takes a while to go to sleep. I keep scrolling through my ISLAND just to check on which species are around. Seeing all the bugs doesn’t help my nerves, even if Sione can incinerate ‘em with one cough. 

The next morning, someone approaches our camp as we ready the trip south from here.

He looks like a trainer, albeit an exceptionally grumpy one. Blindingly blond hair and real pale skin make his green eyes pop, as does a scowl that looks permanent. He looks all three of us up and down, before zeroing in on me.

And wastes no time letting a Pokeball drop from his hand.

Sione slides in front as the flash of light fades, but both of us bristle at the… thing in front of us. Its grey eyes look unassuming, but they’re peering at us from underneath a rusty copper helmet with a worn ax blade on top of it. A flared collar separates its head from a body that looks like three different monsters spliced together, insect-like front legs supported by more traditional hind legs and a fish’s dorsal fin as a tail.

My ISLAND tries to read it to give me any info. It only takes a couple seconds and a photograph for reference to inform me there’s no data to be found. At all. Nothing about this creature prompts a single pop-up. 

Nothing about this creature makes biological sense.

“Take the raichu,” the trainer says.

I back off, right as Sione bares his fangs. The beast pounces right around him, keeping to its directive. I shoot a panic bolt at it, throwing the creature off as it coils for another leap. 

It howls in pain with three voices at once. My spine goes numb. 

“Arceus did  _ not _ approve of this,” Sione growls, fangs dripping fire over his hotly glowing bell. He leaps and sinks them into the monster’s side, sending them tumbling into a tree. The beast manages to kick him off, but the scorch marks left in its side tell me that it’s definitely the one worse for wear.

Iva takes a single step to get into the fray, and Sione hisses. The lazy look in his eyes I’ve grown accustomed to is long gone. He looks a step below feral, with dilated pupils, hackles raised, and everything bared. “Just back me up,” he says, tail batting her away. To my surprise, she just nods and motions for me to get the heck over there right now. It doesn’t take any more convincing for me to do so.

The trainer notices, still staring me down with the same dirty look. He hasn’t moved, hasn’t even taken his other hand out of his pocket this whole time. He doesn’t say anything before his creature bounds right past Sione without even glancing at the torracat. 

It noticed too.

The thing only needs one more leap to close the gap between us. The near-black aura around it, I recognize that all too well from dodging dark-type security guards. I still freeze in place.

I flail away as it swipes down with its axe. A stinging sensation runs through me as I land on my back, breath yanked from my throat on impact. When I see my tail dangling above me, there’s a slim v-shaped chunk missing.

Iva wastes no time delivering a harsh chop to the beast’s neck, sending it stumbling into the kick Sione was readying. 

Somehow, the beast still staggers to its feet after skidding to a halt under a nearby evergreen. Its trainer looks… inconvenienced. His sneer’s gotten wider, but other than that it’s like he doesn’t care that this fight isn’t going his way.

Except, he huffs. “Go for the supports, Null,” he says, prying his creature’s almost unassuming gaze off of me and onto Sione for good. 

“Fucking finally,” Sione spits, digging his claws into the ground. His bell was glowing before, but now it’s an outright flame **. ** The way it flares on either side of his neck makes it look like some kinda infernal bowtie. It’d be kinda cute if he wasn’t so pissed off.

He tenses when “Null” seems to go into a different mode. Rather than all-out attack, it stares him down as some kind of gleaming red starts to fall over Sione like a pall. It quickly settles around him and sharpens. The more it does, the stiffer he gets. Soon he looks like he can hardly move. 

I don’t know how this crazy stitched-together beast knows how to use Imprison, but it’s not good news for Si-

A light bap on the head, and everything goes white as a midday blizzard. Then the black settles in. All I see are yellow gridlines, vaguely reminding me of the cyberspace at Arlo’s. It’s not the same, of course. That was bright and vast. This feels claustrophobic, even with nothing around.

A ticking starts up, like Nikau’s perpetually broken air conditioning. The gridlines intensify, running along the “ground” into the darkness in every direction, before climbing up imaginary walls on either side of me. When everything lurches about, I realize what just hit me. 

I’m in a Pokeball. 

A light illuminates the distance, like the end of a tunnel. That’s all there is to see, and the ticking that slowly accelerates is all there is to hear. That’s all there is to get out of here. 

I speed towards the light, ignoring the wind rushing through the gap in my tail. The metronomic beat stays pretty slow in its cadence, thankfully. It’s getting faster, yeah, and the way this world shakes back and forth doesn’t help, but it’s all predictable. Lean one way, then the other, then straighten out, like a motorcycle speeding around corners. The tunnel gets bigger with each repeat of that. It only takes a couple of them to reach it. 

I burst through the light with no problem, and when it fades, I’m back on Route 5. Iva leaps to bring down a nasty wing on the creature. Sione’s still shaking off that paralysis, with his jaw crackling to life again.

The trainer holds up another Pokeball. I flinch. Null vanishes. Iva crashes to the ground, unable to pull back on her strike in time. 

He stares me down as he pockets the capsule, then takes both hands out of his ripped black pants… to shove them both into his hoodie pockets. He’s got an ISLAND on too, but as far as I’ve seen he hasn’t used it once. Not even in battle, where all the info and aids it provides is too helpful not to use.

He opens his mouth to say something, then thinks against it. And he just walks away.

“Who the fuck are you?” Sione calls after him. The answer is a shrug, like he doesn’t know either. Or like he wants us to screw off. It’s probably that one.

Sione stands there watching after him for a moment. The second he deems him far enough away, he does a 180 and rushes over to me. Iva plucks out a couple feathers and brushes off her ego from that last sequence.

“You okay there, mighty mouse?” he asks. “That fucking Ultra Ball caught me out, man, I’m sorry. Sneaky fucker trying every trick in the book…”

“Yeah, yeah! I’m fine!” I say, though I wince when I remember the gash in my tail. Can hardly even look at it… “That part was nothing once I figured out where I was. Just wish I was a little quicker on the uptake through all that…”

Sione nods sadly. “Don’t worry about that. If you were any quicker, you’d break the speed of light. Nothing we can do but lick our wounds and stay on guard.” He glances down at my tail, and flinches. “Well, maybe don’t lick that.”

Now that I can look him over, he's roughed up too. A couple cuts across his face are the first thing I spot. There’s a tuft of fur yanked out from his whiskers, and bite marks puncturing his side. He and that Null thing really got into a scrap, especially while I was trying not to get caught!

“Was that just some crazy trainer?” Iva asks, approaching us now. For once, she looks the best of us three after a fight. “Never seen anything like that before.”

Sione and I both shake our heads. “Gotta be more than that,” I tell her. “I mean, a monster like that…”

“It’s not fuckin’ right,” Sione spits, finishing my sentence with the vulgarity I wouldn’t have found. “It’s like five different species smushed together. Got a hell of a moveset too. Pursuit is one thing, especially with this kid around, but that Imprisoning nearly did me in.”

I think I see the missing chunk of my tail lying in the grass over there. I try not to grimace as I avert my eyes. “Whatever it is, whoever that guy was, I bet he’s after us for a reason. Gotta be something I hit on,” I say. Sione’s gaze alternates between me and my tail, then out to the road.

Once he spots a trainer with a huge backpack, he calls after them, trying to get them over here. He doesn’t move an inch, just mewls “Hey, buddy! Medicine?” right where he is.

As the boy with a pack as big as he is wanders over, I look at Sione and Iva both.

“Whatever I’m looking at, there’s more to it,” I tell them. “And I think there’s more where that came from, too.”


	8. Half-Lit

“You do realize that there was a giant bug just sitting and waiting for you, right?”  
  
We’re heading east, but according to Sione, we should be heading right back the way we came. I have the energy to make that trek back, of course, but I’m not too sure about the other two…  
  
Iva just turns to him, waits for him to look at her again, and then shrugs. “Too easy,” she says. “If I’m fighting a Totem, then it’s sure as hell not going to be some bug that can’t touch me even on a good day. I’ll take Lurantis, I guess, but if there’s one Totem in Alola I want to throw down with, it’s Salazzle. Always has been.”  
  
“So you’re just going to drag us up a volcano,” Sione replies, staring at either Wela Volcano or the grand facade of the Royal Bank Superdome underneath it. Melemele might forever be a one-town island, and Ula’ula is increasingly urban all over, but Akala is right in the middle. A couple cities, a couple towns, and as Nikau told me, a loooot of commercialism. I didn’t really understand what that meant until I experienced the atmosphere of the island, but I can see what he meant now. Places like Royal Avenue and Hanawao Town have cropped up in recent years thanks to rich developers with grand ideas, and at least with this one it’s paying off big-time. Royal Avenue looks even more crowded than the resorts in Heahea. It probably even rivals the beaches as an attraction, albeit for a very different crowd of people. There’s multiple shops selling Royal Ave merchandise, a couple rival hotels fighting for visitors, street peddlers and performers strewn about… heck, even the megamart looks packed!  
  
Iva’s the only one not impressed by everything. Neither me nor Sione can keep our heads off a constant swivel, taking in the hustle and bustle and all kinds of smells too. Bad smells are part of it too, like the guy whose team have probably never seen a bathtub in their lives, making me bristle. But then we pass a Hypno behind the wheel of a food cart, furrowing a brow at us as he makes some kind of sandwich that has Sione almost drooling, and it takes Iva and I both to keep him on track.  
  
And all around us, trainers parade their ‘mons that for the most part are just starting to deliver on their potential. Here and there, though, you’ll see someone with an arcanine or vikavolt or– whoa, that guy has a salamence! I bet nobody’s gonna want to face him in the arena…  
  
“If you’d like to go fight that monster over there, be my guest. I’m sure your security company will cover the funeral costs. If you’re so confident about me having mine soon, though, then let’s get to Wela Park.” Iva’s beak curls into a mean grin. Sione glances at her, then tries to hide his bristling at the look she gives him.  
  
He stares down the salamence, then the arena again, but he doesn’t stop walking with us this whole time.  
  
“Sione? We can stop if you want,” I tell him. “Honest! All of this is on the way to my next run, and she really wants to, but if there’s anything you really want to do then we can do it too!”  
  
Sione turns to me, his thoroughly unamused expression clashing with my bright little smile. He pauses, like the gears in his head are still whirring, trying to crank out a spoken response.  
  
“It’s fine,” he finally says, turning to look up the road. “Let’s just get to Wela.”  
  
“That’s what I thought,” Iva mutters. Sione doesn’t say another word.  
  
———  
  
I shouldn’t be surprised at how hot Wela Volcano Park is… but it’s really dang hot! Being a trainer here is one thing, when you’ve got your bag and your clothes and you can sweat off the heat, but trainers don’t have fur like I do!  
  
The hike up to the trial site this morning is arduous for all of us, and that’s before the sense that this volcano is still very much active. It’s super craggy, with all paths looking like they fell into ruin as soon as they were formed. Normally I can find telekinetic purchase on any kind of land, but everything’s so rough and rugged here that I’m at the back of the pack. Iva looks like she’s twitching to just leap, bound, and glide ahead, but I bet she’s just conserving energy. Hopefully, in her eyes, for a fight.  
  
We all hardly speak as we traverse Wela Volcano. It’s like we just go into survival mode, too: when we do talk to each other, it’s entirely helpful and courteous, but also short and blunt. Everyone is distant, focused purely on getting up the mountain, but somehow we all still have just enough time for each other.  
  
That’s all rewarded once the elevation levels out, and we see a landing not too far above us where a couple wooden markers stand.  
  
“Trial site,” Iva says, pointing up at them. “Can you tell if there’s anyone up there?”  
  
I close my eyes, pressing hard to sense any energy up there. It’s like I’m a zubat with their echolocation, but way less annoying. It’s a bit of a stretch, but finally I feel the presence of someone who’s very strong and… very bored?  
  
“Yeah, one person,” I tell her.  
  
“Shit. Well, the bad news is there’s no way we’re just going to be able to wander in when there’s a trial guide standing guard. The good news is that I bet there’s a trial about to start, if it isn’t already going on, and in a place like this there’s bound to be a back entrance.”  
  
“A back entrance. To a trial site. On a volcano,” Sione deadpans.  
  
Iva smirks. “Well, a back entrance for avians and psychic surfers, at least.” She holds out a claw to high-five me, and I give it a slap with a paw.  
  
Sione sighs, and leers at me for feeding her ego. “Excuse me, but we felines are as nimble as mammals get. And I’m a fire-type, so these are my people anyways.”  
  
“You ever met a salazzle, then?” I ask him. “Cuz they seem kinda scary to me…”  
  
The torracat takes a deep, long breath. “Yeah. They are. Take birdbrain here’s level of confidence, but instead of wanting to fight, she wants to-”  
  
“Let’s get to finding an alternate route in,” Iva cuts in, glaring at Sione. “And let’s spare this kid’s innocence.”  
  
“What?” I ask. “Look, I know how, uh…”  
  
They both turn to me, far too expectantly.  
  
“You know… how… romantic they try to get with others.”  
  
Sione grins. “Well put.”  
  
Iva leads the way at that. I might be the psychic here, but she has a sixth sense for directions. We continue up this barely visible path away from the trial site, and just as it’s starting to descend, she manages to find the slimmest, roughest alternate route on a ledge above us. She makes it with one effortless leap, and I surf my way right on up pretty easily too. Sione… well, I have to levitate him up here so we can continue on our way, and he doesn’t look too happy about it!  
  
It’s a craggy hike up from here, but the beating of tribal drums lets us know we’re not barking up the wrong volcano.  
  
“It’s just starting,” Iva says. “Let’s hurry.”  
  
We waste no time scampering up the rest of the way, before Iva pulls us behind a small ridge to watch what’s unfolding.  
  
To my friend’s dismay, Totem Salazzle is nowhere to be found. Instead, it’s marowaks aplenty up here, with three of them pounding on drums with their trademark bones. In front of them looms their much, much larger counterpart, staring down at a pelipper like it’s a newly hatched joltik. He spins his own bone idly, just waiting for the first move to be made.  
  
The fight, at least to me, quickly devolves into shambles. The pelipper shoots water everywhere like a busted fire hydrant. For a bird that big, it seems pretty speedy too. Totem Marowak clearly isn’t a fan of that, constantly hopping around to try and keep a close distance and a constant threat. Traditional flames don’t do much, of course, but he spins the marrow into spooky fuchsia and cerulean blazes that spark with an aura that unsettles me all the way over here.  
  
When he connects on a hit, the pelipper reels across the battlefield. Things only get worse when the beat behind him changes. On cue arrives a much smaller salazzle than the one Iva came here to see. With her hawk eyes, though, she spots the Totem herself off in a corner, a good ways from the battle. She must want to watch the fight as much as we do!  
  
Meanwhile, the two current defenders of Wela Volcano tag-team wonderfully, with the pelipper looking pretty scorched up before long. It can’t even roost for long before the salazzle scurries in on all fours before spewing a glob of purple at it. Her speed catches the bird way off guard. That serves as enough distraction for the Totem to graze it with a towering wheel of flames, just to mix things up. Everything is rolling the way of nature over trainer.  
  
Then the world darkens.  
  
The sun dims behind a storm cloud that doesn’t exist. It goes from midday to dusk, and back to midday in a single moment. All my fur stands on end as a cold wave hits me. I nearly fall off my tail, too, my balance leaving me. Everything just… went out of wack.  
  
“You guys okay?” I ask, looking to either side of me. Both Sione and Iva look as confused as I do, but they nod without looking too awfully shaken up.  
  
I can’t say the same of Totem Marowak. He has his hands on his knees, and his eyes are wide like… well, not like he just saw a ghost, since he _is_ one. Like if I saw a ghost, maybe! His tail sags as he tries to catch a breath that left in a night that lasted a second.  
  
The pelipper, just thankful for a break from the onslaught, fires a couple balls of water in the interim. One brings the Totem to its knees. The other nearly sends the salazzle down for the count right there, since she’s got nowhere near the fortitude of her ally. A nasty-looking blade of wind (Air Cutter, my ISLAND informs me) does the trick on her. The marowak stands again and takes a halfhearted swipe with a lazily flickering violet bone, but it misses by a mile. It too can only take one more blow before it’s knocked out.  
  
Beyond them, Totem Salazzle is gone from her perch.  
  
The trial captain, a young man with dark skin and fiery hair, looks downright troubled. He’s just standing there, trying to piece together everything that just happened, and coming to no good conclusions. He looks over the fallen Totem with concern, something the opposing trainer doesn’t quite match. The trainer’s just happy he won, regardless of the very, very weird circumstances.  
  
The other marowaks gather around the big boss, who at least seems to be rousing again. He looks over at a couple of them, saying something through a grimace.  
  
The light goes out above us again… but not out there where the others are. More just like a shadow looming over the three of us. Like-  
  
“What did you do to him?”  
  
It’s Totem Salazzle, totally looming over us. She bends down and picks me up by an ear with a huge spindly hand, looking down her loooong snout at me.  
  
“What the _fuck_ did you do?” she hisses. Her pheromones assault my nose, drawing me into those very angry lavender eyes of hers as she tries to draw confessions from me.  
  
“Nothing! I didn’t do anything!” I tell her, flailing to get out of her grip. I could try a Psychic to do it, but there’s no telling what she might do to me in response.  
  
Below me, Iva squares up. This might be the fight she was looking for, but it’s definitely not the one I was!  
  
“So _Totem Marowak_ just happened to keel over like a litten in a thunderstorm? Nothing happened, even though you’re hiding over here with that little thing on your ear?”  
  
My ISLAND, the little thing she’s talking about, has hardly been able to process her from this close. When it finally does, I get a loot of information that all just tells me her strength is off the charts. Her “Special Attack” is double, no, almost triple what it rates mine at. An encyclopedia entry in a little corner inset reads off facts about how potent her pheromones are, and on the opposite side is a news clipping about a new line of perfumes that’s being investigated.  
  
A pop-up ad for Pokemart-brand Antidotes blocks out my view of her. I can’t even paw it away for fear that the Totem will take it the wrong way, so I just have to wait for it to minimize.  
  
“I promise, we were just watching the fight! My friend’s real big on battling and she, she just wanted to study what was-”  
  
“She wanted to find a worthy opponent, that’s what,” Iva cuts in. The Totem doesn’t put me down, but her attention does shift to the hawlucha giving her a staredown from at least four feet down. “And you’re more than worthy.”  
  
Salazzle huffs some smoke that hits me square in the face. “Oh, so you all wanted to pick a fight, hm? Because if you’re fucking with me and fucking with my people, it’ll be the last fight of your lives.”  
  
“No no, really, we were just passing through. Just wanting to see what was going on up here and do nothing but stay out of the way, right?” Sione says, glaring daggers at Iva.  
  
The hawlucha scoffs, dodging every single one of them and keeping her gaze firmly upwards. “Speak for yourself. Why don’t you let go of the kid and stop blowing hot air up a guy’s ass for once?”  
  
Totem Salazzle hurls me to the ground, my back slamming against a ridge that yanks the air right out of my lungs. Flames dance around her jaw as she snarls at Iva. Her eyes look absolutely set to kill. Sione slides in front of me now, ready to fight fire with fire even at Iva’s behest.  
  
“Salazzle, please!”  
  
She flinches, as does Iva. Kiawe races over in the nick of time, waving his arms like an inflatable tube man outside a car dealership. He still looks about as panicked as before.  
  
“Captain, let me handle this,” the Totem hisses at him, batting him away with an arm. “These insolent little fucks just sullied the name of our challenge. Let me dole out a punishment the tapus would approve of.”  
  
Iva might be the one gearing up to wrangle her, but it’s me that the Totem still leers at. It’s me she thinks did in her friend today.  
  
“No no, it wasn’t him,” Kiawe says, eyes darting between her and me. “I’ve seen what those devices can do, and what they _can’t_ do. And they surely cannot control the Light.”  
  
So that’s what happened. I’d heard a couple stories about stuff like this, but seeing it with my own eyes, even _feeling_ it… it’s scarier than I thought. To think that the power Necrozma gave us all those years ago could just up and falter is harrowing. To think that it would be so stark that it sees a Totem bailing? It sends another shiver through me.  
  
Totem Salazzle still stares me down. Her pheromones don’t do as much as they could since I’m psychic and not exactly the most, uhhhh… caught up in lovey kinda things, but it’s sure clouding my head, and it’s sure making me cower just that little bit more. “You were never the most tech savvy, Kiawe,” she spits, a couple embers coming out with them.  
  
“You don’t have to remind me,” he replies. “But this was a freak occurrence, nothing more. A glitch in the matrix, as they say. Not even Necrozma is perfect, much as we wish it to be that way for our sake. It’s not something that can be controlled period, much less by a young raichu with an ISLAND.”  
  
Iva’s wings bristle in the stiff breeze. Sione’s hackles have almost come back down, but he still eyes both Iva and Totem Salazzle for any moves. A couple marowaks have made their way over here, asking each other what’s going on.  
  
Finally, though, the Totem stands down. The fire disappears from her serrated teeth, though her scowl definitely doesn’t go away. But she relaxes just that little bit to know that we’re safe.  
  
“If you insist. I still cannot say I believe that was natural. But…” She gives me one last glare. “It wasn’t that kid.”  
  
I resist telling her that I’m not a kid, that I’m very much a young adult with a job and a super cool moveset. She just sighs, muttering expletives under her breath that I can’t quite pick up.  
  
As she and the rest of the Wela Volcano gang start to make their way back to the trial site, though, Iva pipes up.  
  
“I guess that means the fight is off?” she asks, almost pleadingly.  
  
Totem Salazzle slowly turns back around with that long neck of hers, and she waits until she’s looking at all of us to roll her eyes.  
  
“Go wrangle Araquanid or something. And take your ‘glitches’ with you,” she snaps.  
  
And that’s all she says before going to check up on her fellow Totem.  
  
Iva turns to us with a shrug. “Damn. Really thought today would be the day.”  
  
Sione growls at her, but I cut him off at the turn as he opens his mouth. “It’s okay, Iva. We can go to Lush Jungle soon. Maybe Lurantis will give you a good battle!”  
  
She shakes her head as she looks out at the Totem she’d just stood up against. “I’d assume so, yes. But when it comes to a fight on this island, nothing beats grappling with the baddest bitch around.”  
  
“Didn’t know you batted from that side of the plate,” Sione says, brushing by her as he heads back down the path that led us up to this troublesome little spot.  
  
Iva swipes at him, getting a smooth sidestep of a dodge from the feline. “That doesn’t factor in at all, imbecile. At least I wasn’t the one drooling.”  
  
Sione skips a beat in his saunter down the mountain. “Hey man, I don’t judge anyone for what happens in front of Totem Salazzle,” he says. “Ain't my fault her pheromones are that crazy. They’d drive steelier souls than me up a damn wall.”  
  
“Milo resisted just fine, though!” she calls after him, giving me a playful punch before gliding over to catch up to him. I surf after both of them, wanting to keep together as well as we can. With everything we’ve run into so far, that’s all we can do.


	9. Two Seen

Everything in my field of view is pulling me in opposite directions.  
  
On one side of my ISLAND’s augmented reality vision, I have Hanawao Town pulled up. A map of Akala’s northernmost town, a Pokemon Center we could probably stay at, the location of my next run… I even bookmarked a restaurant that might have the best salads on the whole island!  
  
On the other side though, framing Iva and Sione ahead of me, is a much more fighty option. Ever since we left Heahea, I’ve been getting pop-up ads for Royal Avenue, for the Battle Royal Dome, for discounts at the Thrifty Megamart handed out by a smiling Hypno. When we passed through on the way here, my ISLAND was yelling at me, telling me that the Battle Royal Dome is just 400 meters to my left. It might have thrown some special offer at me too, but I pawed that one away before even looking at it.  
  
The Dome also showed up in a couple files I found at Heahea Solar, along with a couple others from Arlo’s. I dunno if there’s actually a connection there, given how wide Royal Avenue’s reach is. It might not be involved in my mess in the slightest, but I still might want to check it out to be sure…  
  
Hanawao is the bird in hand, though, so we’ll just have to see if I’m able to circle back around to Royal Avenue. If signs still point in that direction, that is.  
  
We camp out that night at the base of Wela Volcano, but when we make it back to Route 7 the next day, Sione stands at the intersection and doesn’t budge.  
  
“What’s up?” I ask him, seeing him staring south rather than at the ocean just over the dunes across the route.  
  
“Yeah, seriously? We’ve taken care of all our business, and your kid’s got some hacking to do,” Iva chimes in, always so helpfully.  
  
“‘Our’ business?” he replies.  
  
“I mean, my business is fighting, Milo’s business is hacking, and your business is protecting Milo’s business,” Iva says with a shrug. She even starts heading north, expecting us to fall in line.  
  
Neither one of us does. Not Sione, and not me with the vibes I’m getting from him.  
  
“Fuck you,” he growls at her back. “This might blow up your whole world, but I have wants, needs, even, holy shit, dreams. And if we all have some say in where we’d like to go, then for once I’m cashing it in myself,” he says, before turning to me. “You mind if we head back south? I’ve been dying to step into the thunderdome.”  
  
Looks like I wasn’t the only one with Royal Avenue on the mind!  
  
“Yeah, we can go down there!” I say. “Had a feeling you might want to anyway!”  
  
My feeling was just that he’s a torracat who might be close to evolving, but that still counts!  
  
“Why didn’t you stop us earlier?” Iva presses, huffing as she pivots on a heel and strides back over to us. “We were right there.”  
  
“Because someone wanted to nearly get us killed by a giant sexy lizard,” he spits.  
  
“Excuse you, there’s a child present,” Iva replies. Just as I open my mouth to protest, I spot the grin she’s giving me. I manage to hold back any reaction, in that case.  
  
“Sorry. Because someone wanted to nearly get our asses reamed by a huge fucking whore of a lizard, and if that asshat was any blinder to her surroundings then she wouldn’t be able to see past her damn beak. Better?”  
  
Iva shakes her head and tuts. “So belligerent. And I’m the wild. No matter though, we can go play your games back down there. Suppose it’s only fair, if we’re going to… Hanawao, right? And then Lush Jungle.”  
  
“Oh are we?” he asks.  
  
“I mean… I gotta do my run, and I think she’s still gotta fight a Totem,” I tell him, and the nod of approval from the hawlucha next to me says I’m right.  
  
Sione’s tail flickers back and forth as he stretches his super pointy claws, running through everything in his head. “Fair enough. Let’s just hit this road now, though. I wanna be first one in the door to the dome tomorrow, okay? No straggling.”  
  
“If there’s one thing we don’t do, it’s straggle!” I tell him, and that finally gets him smiling again.  
  
“For better or for worse, you’re right on the money there.”  
  
————  
  
It’s definitely not as crowded now as it was a couple days ago. It’s the middle of the week, meaning a lot of casual trainers are at their day jobs… oh, that’s why they call them weekend warriors! It’s also eeeearly in the morning like Sione wanted, so even the vendors are just setting up. What it probably means is that only real early birds and hardcore trainers are around, and I don’t have too much confidence in taking on either of them!  
  
Sione wanted to make sure I was within sight at all times, though, and Iva said I needed practice. She didn’t want to take part (“I prefer my fights mano y mano, or one on two if I’m feeling extra strong”), so here I am at the front desk, right beside Sione, both of us poring over the rules. It turns out they just started letting integrators take part about two months ago, so we’re right on time!  
  
Sione wastes no time shelling out to compete, but it takes me a moment to collect myself (and a moment of convincing from the feline that we have a 50 percent chance of making the money back) before I finally part with the poké. We’re numbers one and two on the list and almost nobody else is around, so we’re ushered into the tunnels below one of the arenas without a clue as to who we’ll be up against.  
  
He signed us up for an intermediate Battle Royal. I’d definitely rather be in a novice fight, surfing circles around grimers or something, but Sione assured me that I would make a good account of myself. I should at least hold my own at this point. I figure my bodyguard isn’t going to go after me too hard, too. He said he might fire some embers at me just to keep from looking sketchy, since they strictly forbid alliances in these fights, but ideally it’d be us two duking it out by the end so we can kinda just have fun!  
  
As much fun as I can in a battle, I mean.  
  
It’s only a few minutes of prep and one last rules explanation before I’m led out of the locker room by my corner of the ring. I sense a decent-size crowd, probably because this is the only fight going on at this hour.  
  
I’m first to be announced, and the guy over the PA system is definitely a morning person.  
  
“All the way from the beaches of Melemele, finding his way to the yellow corner today, hang ten and lay low, we’ve got… Milooooooo!”  
  
I duck and weave all around the aisle as I make my way up to the huge battle ring, trying to feed off the energy of the crowd. From somewhere up and behind me, I swear I hear Iva whoop.  
  
“He might be a starter but he’s hoping to be the finisher, burning with passion over in the red corner, prepare to get owned, ‘cuz here comes… Siooooonnnne!”  
  
He might not be an incineroar yet, but Sione still struts around like he owns the whole dome. Posing, roaring, the whole works! I can only imagine what it would look like if he was evolved! No wonder he wants to get there soon…  
  
“Try not to leave us like this here misdreavus, with a trainer like a triple gainer, welcome back to the green, the lean and mean Clara and her ghoul pal Luna!”  
  
Whoever these two are, they’ve got a pretty good buzz around them. Might be a regular around these parts, which is bad news for me. And that’s before considering the fact that it means I’m fighting a ghost…  
  
“And finally, feel the chill for their debut, dressed in black but over in blue, hoping to fuel this fight like diesel, welcome Gladion and his Sneaselllll!”  
  
It’s the guy from before. He doesn’t have that Null thing, the one that’s five creatures mixed into one, but that sneasel is already eyeing me up and down like I’m a pidgey egg.  
  
“You all know the rules, but fight fair and have fun! Enough success here, and you could be taking the step up to the Master Royals sooner than you think! Now then…”  
  
I glance at Sione, and he just nods. I was hoping he wasn’t too caught up in his element to miss the fact that the guy that already tried to gun me down once is back again, but I shouldn’t have doubted him. It’s his job, after all.  
  
The bell rings out. Sione and the sneasel both pounce towards me before I can blink. I slide out of the way, and fire a charge beam at the misdreavus that’s just watching this unfold to start. It dodges pretty easily, but as long as I’m out of the mess too, that’s what matters.  
  
I turn to look at the other two, locked in a snarling ball. Red eyes and a cackling ghoulish face send me flailing back to the ropes with a yelp. She just decides to keep wary of me after that, as if I’m not going to dare attack her again… and she’s right. The misdreavus settles for what looks like a weak psychic wave at the other two, just trying to wear them down. I’d probably do the same if it didn’t mean hitting Sione too.  
  
Just as they pry apart from each other, each stumbling into the ropes as they try to right themselves, the lights falter. Not like the other day at Wela. This time, it’s just the actual lighting setup going dark, eliciting murmurs from the crowd.  
  
When they come back on, they’re sure not how they were set up. Before, they were all trained on the ring where we’re fighting. Now they’re swiveling all around. Down on us, up at the ceiling, into the audience, anywhere they can shine. The ones that can change colors are now doing so every second, red to blue to green to yellow and back again. A bass-heavy beat thumps, softly at first.  
  
And then some single distorted guitar note stabs through the speakers, and the programmed beat really kicks in as sirens wail.  
  
_“You need to slow down baby, my whole team cash and load out baby, I’m a hero in my hometown baby, stop talking, just go down baby!”_ some guy bellows over the beat, probably as part of whatever song is playing. It’s quite the boastful rap, talking about making money and, I guess, silencing and defeating opponents…?  
  
I’m not aware I’ve stopped in the middle of the ring until I see Sione tackle the sneasel that’s making a break for me. I have no idea how I hardly flinch at that.  
  
“Hello ladies and gents, and welcome to today’s new and improved entertainment!” Someone else has taken over the PA system, a lady with a voice like a pissed-off persian. “So sorry to put off the fight, though, you all can keep going! I know that fucking ferret wanted to. Tsk tsk, you naughty boy.”  
  
The sneasel doesn’t care, not while it’s kicking Sione off and staring me down. He’s got my full attention now though, that’s for sure!  
  
“Everyone else stopped, and here you are trying to get in some cheap shots? Not very sporting of you. Though I suppose Gladion already buried his moral compass in the backyard years ago, didn’t you bud?”  
  
He just huffs and rolls his eyes, like this isn’t the first time someone’s called him out like this. That beat is still blaring, though they’ve cut out the vocals for the song. It’s pretty clear to me that someone’s hacked into the Battle Royal Dome, which I can’t imagine is a very easy thing to do. Judging by the crazy light show and the music and announcing going on, it must have been pretty easy for these guys.  
  
“Too bad, too, he had to go up against some pussy that lives in the ring. He’d have finished the job by now if he was a real torracat though…”  
  
That attracts Sione’s ire, and it distracts him long enough for the dark-type opposite him to disappear, then come back into view behind him and lower its shoulder for a blow that sends him skittering across the ring.  
  
When the sneasel turns his gaze to me, I’ve already shot a Focus Blast at him. He goes crashing into the ropes so hard that he bounces off them and lands face-first even closer to me than he was!  
  
“Ooooh, looks like the dark-type isn’t the only dirty fighter! Seems right though, otherwise this bright-eyed baby wouldn’t stand a chance!”  
  
I keep my head down and my gaze trained on Gladion’s pokemon, trying to ignore the heckling from above.  
  
“Spoiler alert, though, this isn’t the only place the kid’s in over his head!”  
  
My Charge Beam does enough to put him on the brink of fainting, just as Sione is scrambling to all fours again. But what that girl on the PA said… she couldn’t actually know anything, right? Probably just assuming things about integrators. I’ve heard that one before.  
  
“You’re a long way from home, aren’t you? You should probably just take your cheese and go home once you’re done with that other rodent. Playing with computers only gets you so far… unless you’re me, I guess.”  
  
Shoot. They know a lot… that run in Heahea probably got me into a little hot water somewhere. And with Gladion here again, who knows what’s going on?  
  
“Everyone’s chasing you, little guy, if you haven’t noticed already. Everyone’s nipping at your biiiig fuckin’ tail. Where are you gonna go next?”  
  
I throw up an exasperated shrug to the heavens, trying to get them off my back as I watch Sione prepare a fiery chomp for the downed sneasel.  
  
“Oho, he does know we’re here!” the hacker on the PA laughs. “Was beginning to think those ears of yours were just for show! Just like all this battling, by the way. Y’all are just gonna let that misdreavus win it y’know.”  
  
Only now does an official, complete with a black and white striped uniform and a whistle around his neck, leap into the ring and stand between Sione and Gladion’s sneasel as he waves everyone off.  
  
“Back to your corners, back to your corners!” he shouts. “I’m calling this!”  
  
“Nahhhh, I’ll call it ref, don’t worry,” the hacker girl retorts.  
  
The beat drops out. The lights all shut off, making it nearly pitch-black. I flick on the night vision in my ISLAND just in time to see the sneasel pick itself up and spot me in the darkness, like the lighting hasn’t even changed.  
  
When it pounces, I fire a single panicked bolt of electricity, and that’s enough to send him sprawled onto the mat.  
  
“Let’s just get the fuck out of here,” Sione hisses in my ear, making me jump a couple inches off my tail. He doesn’t need to tell me twice!  
  
We bolt back into his locker room, then to the lobby again. We still have to wait for Iva though, even if she saw us leave through the darkness with those hawk eyes of hers, so Sione swings by the front desk for some reason.  
  
“Hello~” he purrs to the lady who booked our spots in what was supposed to be an actual fight. “We were just in that intermediate Battle Royale, and I don’t know if you’ve heard buuuut it got hacked or something? Lights going haywire, a pretty kickass rap song playing, some chick heckling my friend here over the PA?”  
  
“Uhm…” She looks puzzled for a few seconds, before I assume she checks on some frequency to listen to what’s going on in that arena. “Okay, yes, I see that now.”  
  
“Wonderful. Given that the Battle Royale never really got off the ground before the official called the fight off, I’d just like to make sure we’re getting properly refunded.”  
  
I facepalm. We’re not hiding from this hacker, much less the super sketchy guy pursuing us across Akala, just so we can save a few poké?  
  
“You never know what could come up, okay?” he tells me quietly, sensing my frustration. “Especially at this point.”  
  
Luckily, that all gets sorted out within seconds. Just a moment later, Iva leaps off the mezzanine and glides right down to us with a flourish, earning a few claps from me and something far less complimentary muttered under Sione’s breath, which I think I’m happy I don’t pick up.  
  
“Heading out?” she asks. “The only trainer I’ve seen who could take me on had the audacity to refuse my challenge.”  
  
“Right now,” I say, giving Sione a pointed look before I surf out the front doors, assuming the two of them are right behind me.  
  
Everyone is by this point.


End file.
